Scheduled Pay Raises?

Suzannah of the Square Periods — you know the editor, who didn’t play the banjo but should have — was one of three editors who had started work on the same day. I started work as their Executive Editor a few months after. Sheila and Kris had been teachers. Suzannah’s husband was a teacher still.

What all three editors knew about pay raises looked like the scheduled increases of teacher salaries.

That, unfortunately, turned out to be a problem.

When the time came for their first-year performance appraisals, I met with each of them individually. We went through the process of how the self-appraisal part worked, what I would do after that, and what we would talk about together.

Sheila, the star of the three, was already being considered for the next promotion. In the meeting with Sheila something unusual came up. She might have been looking to short-circuit what she didn’t want to happen.

Only Fair or Is It?

Sheila told me about an agreement the three editors had made.

“The three of us are having lunch to celebrate our first anniversary.” Sheila mentioned that they had agreed to reveal the amount of their salary increases. She said they wanted to be sure everyone was treated fairly.

“Oooh. That’s not a good idea.” I said. “I don’t think you want everyone to make the same.”

“Why’s that?Ã¢â¬Â she asked. Remember that teachers don’t go to business school. They think in terms of grades and whole class rules. We spoke about company no tell policy, but I was focused on getting her personal investment in not wanting to share. Understanding that the no tell policy is a support and a protection is important.

“Imagine I hire a guy named Frank with a resume just like yours on the very same day as I hire you. One year later, you’ve done great work. You have managed three projects on your own. Whereas Frank has been confused at every turn and managed to screw up two projects so badly, they will miss their release dates by months. Same raises for both of you?”

“No.”

Sheila had just figured it out.

Money is paid for what the work is worth — and for management of that work in the company’s interest.

The more I wake up in the middle of the night, the more I have to think about the goals of the company, the more I’m responsible for the work of others, the more money I should make. Money = stress, execution, productivity, responsibility. End of story.

I then had the same conversation with the other two. The lunch happened. The salary revealing discussion did not.

Business Rule 9 may sound simplistic, if you already know it.

It’s key to ANY negotiation. When I learned it, suddenly I knew I understood how to buy a new car and how to purchase a house. The mysteries of talking money started to demystify before me. The value of money isn’t just important at work.

When People Don’t See

At the end of the their first year, new editors begin to “find their feet.” They’ve been through the publishing process; completed one or more projects; and know considerably more about making books than they did when they first walked through the door.

We were working on 8-page readers. These books were for kids at the earliest stages of their reading career.

We were at the beginning of the book design process. On this day, we had met to review book design samples and had chosen the one we would go with Ã¢â¬â a large square, 8 inches de all photo or art but a one-inch band for type across the bottom of the page.

The typeface was one of the four then available that had an “open a” and an “open g.” These two letters are important to early readers because they help kids make connections. They look the same way kids are taught to write them.

I tell you this because the discussion of the open a and open g led one first year-editor to over-generalize, taking her woefully astray. Two hours after the design meeting, Suzannah, the editor, came into my office looking seriously concerned.

“We have a problem,” she said.

“I see. Tell me about it.”

“We can’t use this typeface we have chosen. It has square periods.”

She showed me a two-page design spread that had two giant pictures, one sentence per page. She pointed to the periods. Indeed they were square. Pixels are square. So are periods. I guess she hadn’t noticed that you have to go through a few typefaces to find periods that are not. ItÃ¢â¬â¢s kind of like kissing frogs to find a prince. It takes a lot.

“Okay, lay out your thinking.”

“First-grade teachers teach kids to make their periods round like this,” she said demonstrating. She took out a sheet of paper and wrote a sentence like a first grade teacher might — though she had never taught, she seemed awfully certain of exactly how it was done.

“And the typeface is a problem because . . . ”

“It’s different from the teachers’ model.”

“Oh, Suzannah. Now I see.” I turned the two-page spread back to face her. “What you’re saying is . . . if I made another spread exactly like this one replacing only the square periods with round ones, . . . and if I showed the two spreads to ten teachers and asked them to tell me what was different, all ten would see it right away.”

“Oh yes,” said Suzannah. By now I’m thinking, I’d better get this girl a banjo for her knee, because she’s not seeing the world the way it really is.

“That’s okay, Suzannah. I’ll take the hit. I take full responsibility. For every letter or returned book we get because of square periods, the heat will come down on me.”

I’m not sure how long it took for her to get perspctive. I knew there was no convincing her just then. It’s hard to have an unbiased world view when you’re in love with the information in your own head.

Remembering what we once didn’t know seems to be an acquired skill not a natural talent.

That can lead us to endow our customers with information that they have no way of knowing and to us deciding what’s important to them.

Caring for customers is the goal. Configuring them is the problem. Don’t fix square periods that folks don’t even see.

I bet there are “square periods” in your line of work — they show up in conversations where I work more often than I’d ever have thought.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

A Sense of Story

My favorite CFO — I think of him as Ã¢â¬Åmy sometimes-irritating, little brother.Ã¢â¬Â you would, too, if you heard him say, Ã¢â¬ÅThis is the second iteration of my lunch.Ã¢â¬Â — says that I talk in stories and sound bytes.

When he says sound bytes, he means quick points, analogies, and metaphors. It’s a habit that I learned from my dad. I use stories, sound bytes, metaphors, and analogies because they make it easier to explain what I’m trying to say.

We get a sense of story when we are really small. Our parents tell us stories to teach things. We learn about our family and friends through stories. We watch stories that are movies and tell stories that really happened to us and other people.

Stories help us communicate for many reasons.

People listen more closely to stories than they do to someone talking. People know a story has a point. Even more, a story has a beginning, middle, and an end -Ã¢â¬â and the end is usually satisfying. So we invest more in a story, because of the payoff at the end.

Stories bring an overlay of meaning and memories. A story told now reminds us of stories we heard as children and what we enjoyed about them then. Any story I tell gets the benefit of any well-told story that came before it. I only have to make sure that my story is told well.

Sound bytes, metaphors, and analogies offer quick information firmly packed. I can get a point across more quickly and more powerfully. On the day of the Famous Canoe Analogy had I said, Ã¢â¬ÅItÃ¢â¬â¢s time to stop talking about the past.Ã¢â¬Â The words would have sounded an impatient opinion. Fewer words, some humor, and a shocking mental image was what got attention.

Storytelling, sound bytes, and analogies work because they move the problem from literal to figurative. People can explore an idea or a situation and test plans of action, sloshing through muddy waters without splashing the personalities involved. After all, we’re only telling stories.

Stories, sound bytes, and analogies can be a kinder and
more expedient way to get a point across.

Who doesn’t like to hear a story that has a great ending? Like this one — that’s over now. . . . ?

Can This Canoe Be Saved?

The scene is an executive meeting. The characters sitting around the table are the best team of people I’ve ever worked with — they have the highest core competencies and know the business we are in, which unfortunately, is darned unusual. I “sat” on the table inside the black telephone that looked like a spaceship, patched in from Califormia. I had already learned the OZ-like power of the black box by then.

As a company we were fighting the uphill battle of trying to reverse a decline. We were determined not only to show a profit in six months, but to buy our way out of the bank covenants that were tying our hands.

The company ran on a direct mail model much like Landsâ¢ End. The market was schools and educational institutions. The question on the table that day was whether to make one huge catalog drop for the most important fall release or to hold back some money and do a second release in January. Some of us suspected that if fall didn’t work, there wouldn’t be a January. The owners were looking for progress.

I was new to direct mail and in the spaceship on the table, so I walked around my backyard listening in. The longer I walked, the more the conversation went deeper into what had gone wrong in the past. The history was informative as background for the decision. But an hour later, the discussion was still on the history.

I was in California. I had run out of backyard to explore.

“Excuse me,” I said. They had forgotten about me in the spaceship again. I measured my words and spoke with some urgency. “When you’re in a canoe and about to go over a waterfall, NOW is NOT the time to discuss WHO DROPPED THE PADDLE.”

I still smile to think of the Director who answered with a laugh, “Is it a BIG waterfall?”

“YES, . . . and there are LIONS and TIGERS below it, WAITING at the bottom!”

That meeting became known in company folklore as “The Famous Canoe Analogy.”

The President called me an hour later to say thank you for stopping the history telling. The story still comes up when we get together.

Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing to see, especially when we are a part of it. In this case they had forgotten Basic Business Rule # 6:

Focusing on the past can’t fix the future. Focusing on the future might.

We had decided to put all of our strength into that fall catalogue. We made that decision in 10 minutes flat. The decision paid off. We won the bet. We finished the year with 3% growth in an industry that was showing 3% growth, after our own company had suffered three years of 10% decline.

That was also the day that my favorite CFO decided that I talk best in stories and sound bytes. He still doesn’t know I write much better than I talk. (A girl has to have some secrets from a CFO.)

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